The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder

The paint on the walls of the corridor is chipped and burgundy, but the familiar hue isn't making Gerard any less anxious, or comfortable for that matter.

He's staring at the backs of Ryan's moccasins, following him towards the cafeteria. The air is thick but he is cold anyway, and he can feel a few loose threads of his sweater sticking against his bitten fingernails as he's pulling the sleeves further over his palms. He’s slightly nauseous, but it’s only because of the stress, and the rain that’s threatening to spill from the clouds outside is the only thing keeping his mind in a relative state of calm. He doesn’t like the sun, he feels like it could burn that little pinch of sanity he’s got left in his brain.

It's hard to breathe, but focusing only on Ryan and not the entire hallway of students is keeping him on a nearly safe distance from a panic attack. The lobby is cold with a crude stone floor and his head is down, so the fact that he gets lost in his thoughts for a moment, bumping into the first person to walk beside him, doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. He stutters out a ‘sorry’ as the girl waves him off and pushes past him nonchalantly, while Ryan glances at him with an encouraging nod to keep walking. It feels just slightly degrading, since Gerard has always been the one to look after his pride a little bit too much, but he’s seen a lot worse so he doesn’t mind. Kindness and pity aren’t destined to mix, he reminds himself.

“Chin up, nobody’s going to hurt you,” Ryan offers, brushing his arm carefully. Gerard flinches on reflex and Ryan recoils, “Sorry.” His face is glowing with guilt and Gerard doesn’t like that, it makes him want to punch himself in the face.

“No, it’s cool,” Gerard mumbles insecurely. “I’m, uh, twitchy, I suppose.”

“I get it,” Ryan smiles. It’s slightly surreal how Ryan’s words work like anxiety medication, but it’s understandable, since all of his brightness is bound to affect Gerard’s overall darkness in one way or another.

When they get to the door, he shudders a bit, realizing just how many people there are in that single, badly-lit room. The thunder from outside is loud and making him abandon any wish he previously had for a smoke, while his knees feel weak just from glancing through the thin glass dividing him and the cafeteria. He looks at Ryan, but he doesn’t wait, so he opens the door and holds it for him. His lips twitch in a somewhat grateful gesture, and Ryan closes it after they walk into what Gerard considers to be his own, personal version of hell. There’s something pulling him back, appearing inside his gut and all across his body, towards the insides of his elbows, and it makes him feel like Ryan is going to walk away any second now and leave him there to decompose on the cold floor while everybody’s watching.

He doesn’t, though, and even though Gerard almost loses him he’s still there, fixing his floral headband and smiling at him from a few meters away. It’s only when Gerard comes over to him that he realizes that he’s talking to someone, a girl sitting at the table in front of him. Gerard feels alarmed for a second, but his heart rate immediately slows down when he recognizes the freckled, pale cheekbones, choppy black hair and familiar dark brown eyes of the librarian he’s met just yesterday.

“So, uh, Gerard- this is my friend, Jamia,” Ryan motions at the girl, who just smirks knowingly as Gerard is biting is lip and trying not let his embarrassment show on his face. The tension is thin but it’s crawled all the way down to his lungs, and he’s pretty sure no one by him is feeling it. “Am I missing something here?”

“We met at the library yesterday,” she grins wickedly, but it’s not mean, just teasing and Gerard appreciates it at that moment more than he does the fact nobody else in the room is paying attention to them. It’s a little unnerving, because both Ryan and Jamia seem to be somehow out of the ordinary dynamic of the general student body in this school- but it’s also keeping him at ease in the sense that he supposes he might not seem so off after all here. He’s not sure what he’s thinking, he’s kind of disoriented, but he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be continuing her thought just about now.

“I, uh, tripped a lot,” he giggles nervously, “but that’s kind of old news. I’m a very disoriented human being.”

“Sit down, then,” Ryan nudges him gently, as if he’d break if he pushed rougher than that. Gerard appreciates it, it makes him feel safe. “Wouldn’t want you to trip over air and fall.”

And when Jamia starts laughing at the gesture, offering him some of her chips and starting a conversation like they were nothing less than old friends catching up, the room starts feeling warmer even though he’s sure the heating is off. It’s what makes him think he’s somehow bound to be there, and perhaps that’s all he really needs- someone to help him feel normal again.

*

Gerard’s head feels heavy as he plops down onto the couch beside his mother on a Thursday afternoon. He’s already flung his backpack somewhere in the hallway along with his jacket, his docs filthy from the mud and dirt outside. He hates walking to school so much that he’d rather live further away from town just so he could ride the bus, especially since the area is constantly under attack of rain and generally bad weather. It’s kind of weird, since he likes walking in general, it calms him down- but when it comes to school, he’d rather not walk at all.

His mother sees the expression glued onto his face and rolls her eyes, brushing his hair from his forehead. “Come on, school is not that bad.”

“It’s not,” he agrees, “but I still hate mud. And I have a giant headache.”

“Coffee and Advil?” she asks, smiling. When he just looks at her pleadingly, she snorts and pushes the TV remote in his hands. “You little ass kisser. Find something interesting to watch.”

He sticks his tongue out at her as she’s leaving the room, but settles further into the couch, yawning as he’s flipping through the channels. At first he feels the need to groan a few times when all he sees are soap operas, and he ends up settling on some shitty documentary about the paranormal. He doesn’t really pay attention to it as he’s listening to the pitter-patter of rain against the window pane. The sky is a weird shade of earthy blue, like it’s singing an ode to sleep to Gerard’s tired eyelids. It’s times like these when Gerard remembers his brother, and the way he’d always say there’s no sadness allowed on rainy days- if the Heaven is crying, you shouldn’t follow suit.

Gerard doesn’t believe in God anymore.

When his mother returns, he knows she’s thinking the same, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he just takes the mug from her hand and sips carefully, swallowing his thoughts down together with the coffee. He doesn’t need that right now, he reminds himself.

“Hold on, turn the volume up,” she says, eyes on the screen, and Gerard obeys indifferently, his thoughts somewhere far away from home.

He remembers hair dye, since he knows his roots are far out already and his hair looks like it’s levitating an inch away from his scalp. Then he thinks of how soft Ryan’s hair is, and how Jamia laughed when Gerard stuttered out the compliment so ungracefully that he wanted to bury himself in a hole right there and then. He almost smiles at that, almost, but then he feels the need to scratch his wrist again and the moment is gone.

“Holy shit,” he hears his mother whispering beside him, and he travels back into reality.

He looks at the screen, expecting something groundbreaking, but all he sees is a shitty energy drinks commercial flashing across the screen in vibrant colors. “Huh?”

“We were on the news,” she says, her words still a little unsure. Gerard’s eyebrows draw together, forehead creasing, and she looks at him. “No, not us. But our town. This town.”

“Why?” It’s a pretty shitty town, he adds in his head, but doesn’t voice it.

She thinks about it for a moment, but then she settles back into the couch, her breathing shallow. “Two people found dead in the woods.” She looks out the window, seeming unnerved, glancing over the trees that mark the beginning of the forest that surrounds the entire town. Gerard gulps obnoxiously loud. “Slaughtered.”

“Well,” Gerard sighs, a weird sense of dread spinning in his head. He scratches his wrist a bit, but then releases a breath he was holding for too long. “Fuck.”

“That’s not all,” his mother says, seeming slightly disoriented. “They’re world-class criminals. Were,” she blinks a few times rapidly. “Serial killers, or something, the police was chasing after them for over ten years.”

“Holy,” he wheezes out, slightly messed up from the thought that someone got brutally murdered practically in his back yard. A part of him is trying to process how creepy that is, beckoning him into the thoughts of being in danger whenever he steps outside, but the other, louder part is actually only thinking about the overall justice of the situation. True, nobody actually deserves to die like that, but perhaps people who’ve killed so many deserve it just a little bit more than your average, ordinary human.

He ponders over it a little, sighing when he realizes it’s kind of pointless. “Do they know who did it?” Or what, he thinks, but decides against mentioning it to his mother.

“No,” she grimaces, biting her own lip in the process. “That’s what fucked me up this much, actually. Remember the thing I told you about the other day, with the sheep and the oil tar?” Gerard nods, not sure where this is going. “Well, it’s literally the same thing. The people’s parts were all over the place, and there was oil tar everywhere. They even showed pictures, goddamnit.”

Gerard suddenly feels just a little sick to the gut. “Isn’t that, uh, kind of creepy? Like, with the sheep it could’ve passed for some sort of animal attack, even with the tar… but how would an animal know to differentiate a murderer from someone who isn’t one? I mean, it’s obvious that it was somehow intentional, people go to that forest every day-”

His mother puts a hand over his mouth. “No.”

Gerard closes his eyes and squints forcefully, sighing against her palm. “Okay.”

*

“All I’m saying is,” Gerard sniffs, “is that it’s shady as fuck. I need a cigarette. I spent the entire night up just thinking about this.”

Jamia’s lips draw into a tight line, and Ryan looks like he’s thinking as he says, “Maybe it’s just a coincidence? I mean, are you sure it’s not just an animal attack?”

“Yes! I’ve watched enough horror flicks to know it’s not just an animal attack,” he huffs out, rubbing his face with his palm. “I’m tired.”

Jamia glances at Ryan, who grimaces shortly, but then nods after she throws a few convincing facial expressions at him. Gerard is just looking at them with a blank face expression, he feels like the bags underneath his eyes have developed a mouth and are currently eating his entire face away. “You can cut the telepathy crap, you know.”

“Listen,” she finally says, eyes soft and smile genuine. “My parents aren’t home this weekend, so Ryan and I were thinking of planning a small get-together. You seem really strained, and I think you need a break.” Gerard is already about to say no, but she cuts him off before he even forms the words in his throat. “It’s just us and a couple of friends. They’ll all love you, I promise.”

He looks at Ryan, who’s watching him expectantly. He raises an eyebrow. “Is the guy from the library going to be there?” Gerard cringes at the memory.

“Who, Frank?” Jamia says, and Ryan starts laughing. At the name, or something else, Gerard doesn’t know. “Maybe, I’ll ask him tonight. He and this guy, Pete, are pretty much arch enemies, though, so I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.” She winks suggestively, and Gerard’s stomach spins at the sole idea of what she might be thinking.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he says, sounding a little too defensive to be convincing. Ryan looks amused, and Jamia chuckles at Gerard’s face expression. He can feel the blood rush all the way down to his chest and he hates it, but he bites back the urge to fall through the floor and releases a long breath.

“Sure it isn’t,” Ryan smiles, ruffling Gerard’s hair fondly. “You need to dye this mane, man, these roots make you look like half of your hair is missing.”

Notes

hi. i suck, huh.

i should thank mineral for this chapter. hell, i should thank mineral for my entire life. the entire world should just collectively thank mineral for generally existing.
well, after that short-but-informative rant, i'm off- 'the voice' is on tv and i am lame.

xomls